The Time of Long Grass
by IronRaven
Summary: On Lothal, if they say you're "in the long grass", it means you're a little lost. Or maybe just a lot lost; it was what they tell kids when their Tooka never comes home. This is the Time of Long Grass for Sabine Wren, while she waits for Ezra Bridger or the Empire. One is her hope, one is her fear, and until then, she has her duty.


**The Time of Long Grass**  
**Three days after the Battle of Lothal.**

(Note that this exists in the same path as my other works, Colors in Our Sky and Wren in Doubt. They are not required reading, but this is going to be Sabezra with longing.)

Sabine Wren stood her ground, spine perfectly straight and jaw tight. She didn't like this. But she had to. This was a fight where there was no way to win, only different ways to lose. She had to do it her way. Her fingers flexed in their gloves, her entire body ready to move.

"Sabine, please. We really need you- you're a great fighter and a good pilot and a natural leader."

The Mandalorian refused to blink as the wind wipped across the boundless prairie of Lothal and into her eyes. "I know, Hera, and I'm sorry. But I'm needed here."

Lothal had thrown off the Empire. For now. They'd be back. In the mean time, one mother expected her to come home, to Mandalore or Krowsnest or anywhere under their suns to fight the Empire and for her people. The other expected her to stay home, on the _Ghost_, to fight the Empire with the Alliance and for the whole galaxy. Lothal honestly wasn't worth it, what had been an agricultural and clean mining world with a little light industry before the Empire. A few years ago, it's only claim to fame was that it was probably the homeworld of what everyone called tookas.

Now... it was duty. It was a promise. She'd given her word, as a Mandalorian, and as his friend. It was... something she couldn't say.

Hera sighed. It hurt. It hurt so much. Rex and Wolffe were standing at the landing ramp, watching silently. They hadn't told her what was going on last evening, when they were finally able to sit down for a meal together, the last of the Specters. The two old clones had joined them; Hondo had declined the invitation, and scuttled into the shadows like the old pirate knew something was happening.

Last night, her daughter had called the clones a word she didn't know but the clones did. The two old men smiled, so it had to be something good. _Bavodu'e_. She had been curious, and but she hadn't asked at the time. She finally had a chance to ask Rex while they were running a final check on her ship before returning to the Alliance. As he explained, there was thumping in the cargo hold- either supplies the clones and Kallus had brought for the insurgents, or another crate full of food. She was looking at him, unclear if she'd heard the old trooper right, when Kallus entered the bridge. "Lt. Commander Wren is leaving the ship, General. With her things."

The stare had just swung to the ex-Imperial. He didn't flinch, until she shoved him into Sabine's usual seat and bolted past him. She wasn't sure if she'd bothered with the ladder or just leaped- she knew better, she wasn't a Jedi, or a Lasat, or a very specific Mandalorian. She hadn't tackled her wayward operative, but only because a last second thought had reminded her that it was a very specific Mandalorian. The fight had started almost immediately. In coming days, Hera would compare it to the fights she'd had with her father before leaving Ryloth with Chopper, but at that moment she could only see the young woman who had to shut up, stang it! Shut up and listen to her!

"Please, Sabine. Come with is. We've- I've lost Kanan, and," Hera's voice was taken by a sob. "And I've lost Ezra. I can't lose you to." Hera's lekku twitched and writhed, silently screaming in rage and sorrow. The Empire's return wasn't a matter of 'if' but 'when', and 'anyone on Lothal when it was reduced to lava would be ash'. General Syndulla had already passed those very words from Mon Mothma on to the new Governor. The words screamed in her mind. "You know what is going to happen."

Sabine nodded, pointedly not seeing the tears that dripped from the green jaw. "I know. Thats why I need to stay. With a few professionals, there might be a chance of training enough partisans to make it too expensive to try to take the planet back."

"Is that the only reason?"

Sabine's foot started to glide back, reflexively and defensively, before she consciously stopped the retreat. She would not lie. "No."

"Hmmhmm..." Hera reached down and gently took Sabine's hand in her fingers, lifting it off the lightsaber that hung from her belt now. "Sabine. There is always another way."

"And my path is here now." She pulled her hand back- not a yank, not angry or afraid, but determined. "These people don't know what is coming. I do. Right now they're celebrating, they think the Empire is gone. We haven't even accounted for everyone, there are signal relays and sensor stations that no one has checked and probably supply caches and orbiting probe droids." Sabine drew her breath in harshly, telling herself that it wasn't a sob. "Ezra is gone, and I have to make sure he has something to come back to. He's counting on me."

The words slipped between Hera's ribs like a blade, twisting between them and in her heart. She'd wanted, needed, needed to believe that it was all just an illusion when Kanan had died. It was a Jedi thing, he'd pulled off some trick and she hadn't seen it and he'd come back from the fire and the blast and just wander into camp and find her mourning him and just hug her from behind and kiss between her lekku and tease her a little for thinking he was dead and... and... and after... the damn... the damn Empire was gone... without the damn Empire... they'd... they'd do something. Some thing normal. Together. With this weird family. With the kids they'd adopted. Maybe with one of their own. And now he was dead, and she'd lost her son, and now her daughter... Hera tried to speak, but all that came out was pain.

The tears gave Sabine permission to let hers fall. "Hera." She wrapped her arms around her leader, her second mother. "The Alliance wrote off Lothal. We didn't. Ezra didn't. And he is coming back. I'm just keeping his spot warm, and then I'll rejoin the Rebellion or go to Mandalor, wherever the fighting is fiercest. I'll make sure that Lothal will be able stand without him, and then I"ll drag him with me I have to."

There was a messy snorgling inhalation as Hera lifted her head, her skin flushing a dark olive. "Promise me. Promise me that if Lothal is under attack, you'll call me- I'll come."

"No, I can't do that. General Hera Syndulla won't be the one who lost the war to save one person." She pressed her forehead to Hera's. "My mother thinks too highly of you for her to ever hear that. Pretty sure your father would be mad to."

Hera laughed, knowing that the younger woman was right. Perfectly right. "Fine." The tears still flowed, but silently, as she brushed Sabine's bangs back. "But if I ever call you, and tell you the Empire is coming, you tell Ryder to evacuate, and if I tell you just to run, you don't argue with me. Promise! Promise you'll run away, just get in the first ship you find and leave. Just run, and don't look back."

"I promise, Hera. Kar'tylir darasuum."

Hera leaned back, knuckling her tears away. "You know I don't speak Mandalorian."

"It means you'll always be in my heart." Sabine didn't brush away her tears. There were no shame in them. Others would judge this as cowardice. Others as madness- she knew Hera and Zeb and Kallus and most of the others thought that Ezra was dead. Rex and Wolffe just said that Jedi were hard to kill and harder to stop. Chopper thought he was out there, and had demanded to be shown the body if 'the kid' was dead. He made it clear that no evidence wasn't evidence, Ezra was just missing. That the beskar'ad thought Ezra might still be out there, trying to get back, encouraged her. "May the-"

"No! Don't. Please, Sabine, don't say that." Hera shook her head, voice strained. "Everytime someone has said that in the past month, I've lost them."

"Then clear skies, Hera."

"Good hunting, Sabine."

Neither of them wanted to be the one to turn away. But they both knew that they had to be, or they'd never take the next step. They both turned, Hera towards the _Ghost_, Sabine toward the tents that marked the new Lothal government. As Sabine put her helmet back on, she tapped the controls for the macrostalk. A small window let her watch Hera trudge towards their- no, back to her ship, while Sabine pushed the crate of her things. Just like on Krowsnest, just like so many times, it hurt. Don't look back. Look forward, that is where Ezra will need me. I will not look back. I will not look back. By the stone in my bones and the steel in my blood, I will not look back...

Hera paused at the bottom of the ramp to the Ghost, and looked back. She knew how capable Sabine was, and yet, she still looked like a little girl that the twi'lek had seen only in imagination. So small, so defenseless. She took a breath, but almost jumped when she felt Wolffe's fingers at her elbow.

"It's time, General. She can take of herself."

**Author's notes:** I first posted this on AO3, but I"m not sure how far I'm going to take it. I had a big arc, but from what we've seen in the Mandalorian, some radical rework needs to be done. I'm fairly sure a very significant guest is dead by the time Sabine and Ahsoka go on the road, and to be very honest I"m not sure Sabine even has any family left other then Specters. The Purge appears to have been very nearly a Base Delta Zero operation. So I feel very conflicted about her family appearing in this now, with the Purge, which had been the plan. I even had a way to work The Way and Manda'o living in cover communities, but now that we know Din Dijarn was a _Death Watch_ Foundling it makes me question how large this plan is. I'm sure Filoni and Faverau will make sure we get the story

Sabine speaking more Mandelorian is an atavistic response, and emotional regression. She, the old guys and Chop think he's alive.

Beskar'ad, literally "child of beskar", the son/daughter of steel. Minor head cannon of mine is that if Sabine or most other modern Mandelorians use that rather than "droid", it mean they've accepted that this mechanical is pretty much a person, not a thing.

And Bavodu'e is "uncle". She might not have formally adopted them, but ever since the Taung adopted runaway slaves of their enemies, not all those who have been found are young.


End file.
